Mercury Rises by Robert Kroese Read Free Book Online

never see him again. She didn't exactly miss him; she felt more or less the way she had felt that day she came home from school to find that her father had sold the bright orange Oldsmobile Toronado that he had driven as long as she could remember. The car was horrifically loud, belched huge clouds of blue smoke for a good ten minutes every time it was started, and always inexplicably smelled like overripe peaches, but Christine had cried herself to sleep that night because she couldn't imagine life without it.
    The man she had been staring at glanced her direction, and for a moment she thought he was looking directly at her. She half expected him to walk over and launch into a series of questions about what exactly she knew about the Anaheim Event, but he simply muttered something under his breath, stood up, and then walked away.
    Of course he wouldn't question her. There was no reason to suspect she had had anything to do with the destruction of the stadium. In fact, she reminded herself, she hadn't had anything to do with it.
    Yet, for some reason, she felt a twinge of guilt whenever she thought about what had happened here. That guilt was the main reason she hadn't visited the implosion site until now. She wasn't sure her brain would be able to process the reality of the aftermath; until now it had seemed like something out of a half-remembered nightmare, and a part of her expected to break down completely at the sight of the destruction. But standing here overlooking the crater, she felt like an extra in a Hollywood film. The vast gray crater dotted with tents and portable offices bore no resemblance to the image of Anaheim Stadium packed with True Believers that was etched into her mind. Surveying the scene now, she simply felt numb---and somehow that was worse than the tsunami of guilt she had expected.
    Fraternizing with Mercury has warped my soul, she thought. Seeing this hole in the ground instead of a stadium filled with tens of thousands of people should make me feel something . After all, I was the reason Karl was onstage in the first place. If I hadn't saved him and delivered him to Harry wrapped up with a nice bow, he wouldn't have been here, and Izbazel wouldn't have detonated the anti-bomb. It's my fault .
    But she couldn't make the words mean anything. Damn it, she thought. Maybe I just need to get out of here. Away from this place, this city. Somewhere I can do something meaningful.
    She fingered the scrap of paper on which she had written the number of Eternal Harvest. Africa? she thought. That was a bit extreme, wasn't it?
    On the other hand, her career as a journalist seemed to be over, and she still dreaded returning to her condo. Why not move to Africa, far away from the aftermath of the Anaheim Event, the cynical machinations of the Beacon , and her infernal linoleum? A remote village in eastern Africa sounded positively welcoming compared to this unholy place. She couldn't possibly feel more useless and unfulfilled there than here, and who knows? She might even be able to do some good---real good, helping people in a meaningful, concrete way for once, rather than spreading a combination of false hope and cynicism through her Apocalyptic columns.
    Gunfire erupted in the direction from which she had come, followed by screams. Police cars and National Guard vehicles raced past her toward the scene. Pandemonium was taking hold of Los Angeles.
    Christine pulled her cell phone from her pocket and began to dial.

SEVEN
     
    In high school Jacob Slater had been diagnosed with Asperger's syndrome, a vaguely defined condition which, in the final analysis, meant that people gave him the heebie jeebies.
    He didn't like crowds, and he liked smaller groups of people even less. One-on-one contact with a person he didn't already know was roughly as painful for him as a third-degree sunburn. To compensate him for this deficiency, the Almighty had given him a keen intellect and a preternatural ability to make sense of